10 & 1/2 Years of Self Publishing, A Report

The first half of my 11th year as a publisher has been a remarkably good one. My best ever, in fact. The three keys have been 1.) a fairly substantial catalog of books, 2.) relatively frequent releases, and 3.) the elephant in the room: the Google Play Store.

1.) My back catalog now offers 19 to 23 books, depending on the the store. (In some stores, The Bright Black Sea and The Lost Star's Sea have been split into a six book series in order to offer them as audiobooks on Amazon.) 

Even 10 years later, The Bright Black Sea continues to be my best selling book. Between ebooks and audiobook versions it sold between 150 and 337 copies a month over the last six months. This illustrates that genre does matter, since space opera is one of the most popular SF sub-genre. Shadows of an Iron Kingdom is set in the same universe as The Bright Black Sea and it's usually my second most popular title. However, for some strange and unknown reason it outselling the first two books in that series. My best guess is that it has something to do with its title or the Gothic vibe of the story.

Depending on the month, most of my other books sell from 50 to 150+ copies between ebooks and audiobook editions, the bulk of them on Google. With twenty-odd books to sell, sales add up. Plus, as I've mentioned before, for every new reader you sell a book to, they may go on to read more of your books, ideally, all of them. In my case, a single new reader might account for 18 additional sales. 

2.) Since September 2024 up to this week's Nov 6th, 2025 release of The Founders' Tribunal, I have released two novels, and two novellas. I plan to release a third novella with a bonus short story, The Isle House Ghost and Nine Again, in February 2026 to continue this pace. New books generate a bump in monthly sales, not only on account of the sales of the newly released book, but in sales across the board, as new releases have their own less crowded selection on the ebook stores making it is briefly easier to reach new readers and remind past readers you're still around and writing. 

I am not racing to release books for the sales. I write because I enjoy writing every day. When I have shorter stories to tell, I can write more stories, which naturally leads to more releases.

3.) My sales on Google for both ebooks and audiobooks continue to dominate all the other venues combined. In any given month, most of my books on Draft2Digital, Kobo, and Amazon usually sell in only single digits, and many do not sell at all on Amazon. I sell 8x to 10x more books on Google than any other venue. The only way I can explain this is that people read books on their phones, and there are a lot of Android phones out there, with the Google Play Store as the default book store.

I'm going to keep this simple this time around. Here are the sales by month, venue, and book type for the period May 2025 thru Oct 2025.

Monthly Book Sales May - Oct 2025

 Sales           ebooks        audiobooks     percentage ebooks/audiobooks

May 1405     779 ebooks 626 audiobooks   55.4% ebook/44.6% audiobook

June 1707    982 ebooks 725 audiobooks   57.5% ebook/42.5% audiobook

July  2040  1407 ebooks 633 audiobooks   69% ebook/31% audiobook

Aug  2084  1364 ebooks 721 audiobooks   65.4% ebook/34.6% audiobook

Sept 2007  1261 ebooks 746 audiobooks   62.8% ebook/37.2% audiobook

Oct  1796  1121 ebooks 629 audiobooks   63.4% ebooks/36.6% audiobook

                       6 paperback books sold

Total Book Sales 1H 2025  11,039  ebooks 63% audiobooks 37%

For comparison;  1H 2024 7,671  1H 2023 9,177   1H 2022 9,054 

Total Book Sales April 2015 to October 2025  114,503

Sales by Venue/ Percent of Sales. (Year 10:  May2024 - April 2025)

Draft2 Digital* 1,767     16%  (Year 10: 21.5% -5.5% )

Kobo                 118       1%   (Year 10: .5% +.5%) 

Amazon             256       2%  (Year 10: 5% - 3%)

Google           8,888      81%  (Year 10: 73%  + 8%)

*D2D includes Apple, Apple audio, B & N, Smashwords, et al. 

Revenue from Amazon sales

$36.53

The most interesting number in the data is that audiobooks only accounted for 37% of my sales so far this year, compared to 49.5% in my 10 year sales period (May 2024-April 2025) despite selling more total books this half. I have no clue as to why.

The bottom line is that I continue to sell at a midlist author's rate. Enough to keep me from getting discouraged. Of course, it is 100X easier to sell books at $0 than even $.99, so you can discount my sales as much as you care to. However, underselling your competitors is a Business 101 strategy. I sell most of my books at cost, and yet still make a tiny profit doing so, and have been doing that for more than 10 years now. I chose to value readership over pocket money, and laziness over hustling for sales. This low stress approach to writing and publishing has paid off; I'm still writing and publishing new books after 10 1/2 years in the business. Most authors, indie or trad can't say that.